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I went to see "South Pacific" this afternoon, and it was an... interesting experience. I had never seen the show before in any form - either live or on film - though I did know all of those classic songs. And I think I can see why the show has not been revived on Broadway since it's original production in 1949. Time has not been kind to it. Or maybe it's that director Bartlett Sher has not been kind to it. More likely it's a combination of the two.
The first act clocks in at an hour and forty minutes. And after the thrilling overture during which the stage is pulled back to reveal the extremely large orchestra, well... I felt every minute of it. It just drags on and on. Maybe it's because I've heard all of the songs so many times before, but they each really seemed to stop the show cold. Usually after hearing an album time after time, it's illuminating to finally see the song in context. Not so here. Granted the show may be a bit creaky - it was written almost 60 years ago after all, but I think the staging was a big part of that too. The big production numbers like "Bloody Mary" or "There Is Nothing Like A Dame" seemed to fair all right, because they were more about the soldiers goofing off than really story telling. But with the love songs between Emile and Nellie, it seemed awfully odd to have them spend a large chunk of say, "Some Enchanted Evening," with them singing directly to the audience instead of facing and singing to each other. And one more quibble... is it really necessary to do what seemed like a medley of every song from the first act at the end of it? And we wonder why the first act is so long? Anyway, at the intermission I was really wondering whether this show is really just best done in concert form, so we get to hear all of the songs sung, but don't need to invest so much time in those dreary book scenes.
The second act started off at an equally underwhelming pace, with those Thanksgiving Follies just dragging on for what seemed like forever, and then "Happy Talk" which just seemed really bizarre and out of place (the book scenes with Bloody Mary made her seem like this really intelligent but somewhat bizarre looking islander, and then she just suddenly starts singing this random happy Rodgers and Hammerstein song to her daughter and her boyfriend, it just didn't work for me). Then we get "You Have To Be Carefully Taught" which sort of bumpily flows into "This Nearly Was Mine." I've read that Rodgers & Hammerstein had to really fight to keep "You Have To Be Carefully Taught In The Show," and I understand that it's an important song - but maybe it's an important song that they could have put somewhere else in the show - because we have Emile being upset about Nellie dumping him, then Cable singing this random song about prejudice, and THEN we get "This Nearly Was Mine." It just really felt like "This Nearly Was Mine" wanted to naturally flow from the conversation with Emile and Cable, without that other song interrupting everyone's train of thought. But then Paulo Szot sings "This Nearly Was Mine," and the grumbling in my head about the odd placement stopped and I started listening, and it seemed like time stood still while he was singing. That moment was the first time in the show that just absolutely totally worked - it was just him by himself singing to the audience - and it was simple, absolutely beautifully sung, and just really absolutely riveting. That song alone, provided enough energy for the show to smoothly sail home (no pun intended there). What I did notice, was after (the earth shattering, totally made the three hour show worth it) "This Nearly Was Mine" and the end of the show, there are almost no more songs. There's a moving short reprise of "Some Enchanted Evening" for Nellie, a really bizarre reprise of "Honey Bun" sung by the soldiers marching off to war that really really really should have been cut because it made no sense and really ruined a powerful moment, and then a little bit of "Dites Moi" at the very end. So what really surprised me was that the show really worked best when there were the fewest songs to interrupt. Just watching almost a play with its beautiful underscoring was really just extremely powerful. It almost made we wonder if the show would have been better (to the detriment of musical theatre in general - certainly all of those songs ending up in a trunk would have been a travesty) if the show had had only a fraction of the number of songs it ended up with.
So really what I came away with was that this is a mostly creaky, flawed musical, with fantastic music, but which when it finally gets down to business deep in the second act, can be really exciting and powerful. At least in this production. I can certainly imagine that another production that perhaps better knew what to do with the plethora of musical numbers could have created a better more cohesive whole. But as this is my one and only experience from the show, that is what I took away from it.
As for the performances, I thought the cast was pretty strong. I've only seen bits and pieces of Mary Martin's Nellie Forbush, but what I've seen made her seem far more interesting in the role of Kelli O'Hara. I think O'Hara was maybe missing some of the zaniness that the character requires. When (it looked like) she was looking into Emile's eyes when singing the end of "Some Enchanted Evening" in the first act, I really felt a sizzle, and her reprise of the song in the second act was moving as well. So I think she had the more serious part of the role down, but she was a bit lacking in the spunk department. As for Paulo Szot, I thought he was quite good. His voice was spectacular (especially in "This Nearly Was Mine"), and his acting was fine. I was rather disappointed in Matthew Morrison's Cable. His singing was fine, but he was just really bland and charmless. I was actually happy when he died in the second act, just so I wouldn't have to suffer through any more of his scenes. I then felt bad when Liat came and found out her love was dead, because I thought she was sweet. But they surely could have found someone more interesting for the role. I'm not going to go through the rest of the cast name by namer, but I really didn't have a problem with anyone else, it really a fairly strong ensemble.
Well, I think I've gone on for far too long now. So I'll leave you with a Youtube clip of Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza singing "Some Enchanted Evening." Notice had romantic it is when Emile sings the song while clutching Nellie instead of standing across the (crowded or empty) room from her:
